Improving the Supply of Fertilizers to Developing Countries: A Summary of the World Bank's Experience

摘要

The paper is based on two decades of World Bank Group experience improving the efficiency and security of supplying fertilizers to developing countries. It shows that the availability of fertilizers is vital to food production. Because of current concern about changes in global weather patterns and other threats to food production systems, it is essential that modern, intense agriculture be expanded. Fertilizer is the least substitutable input to modern agriculture as land and water resources become constrained. Subsidies, pricing, the role of state production and distribution companies, and the terms of internal and external trade are the main policy issues that World Bank experience has shown to be important. The paper summarizes that experience and shows that a continued Bank role in the sector is important, both in lending operations and in improving technical understanding of a complex business. (Copyright (c) 1989 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.)